Conservation of Ninjutsu/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: One sufficiently-powerful fighter can take out any number of stock henchmen as long as it is a large number.

  • Straight: The hero takes out a large group of enemies without much of a problem.
  • Exaggerated:
  • Justified:
    • The hero has been specifically trained to fight against overwhelming numbers and wields a weapon suited for fighting many enemies at once.
    • Groups of robotic mooks run on the same energy source, so the fewer members of a group, the more power per robot.
    • Or mass training a bunch of mooks at once means they don't get as personalized and thorough training as a hero personally trained by Grand Master Karaashi
    • Or: Too many mooks results in them getting in each other's way while giving the hero a target-rich environment.
    • Or: The Dragon or Big Bad is Dangerously Genre Savvy and makes the hero wear himself out going through mooks. By the time he is reached, he can barely stand.
    • Ninjas are assassins, not frontline troops. One at a time, sneaking up on a hero, when they can use stealth to their advantage, they can do far much more good (or evil, as the case may be).
    • Or: The Dragon or Big Bad will send out his worst mooks en masse as cannon fodder, hoping that quantity will make up for (lack of) quality, while his less common, more competent mooks get sent out in smaller groups so to make better use the scarcer resource they represent.
    • Or, the massive army of mooks is really just one enemy with Doppleganger Spin powers. As the clones are mowed down, the rest become stronger.
    • The hero is a mage with spells to cut down weak mooks en masse who was never meant to solo strong lone enemies.
  • Inverted:
    • An army of good footsoldiers takes on a lone badass villain.
    • Alternatively: The more zombies show up, the more powerful each individual zombie seems to be.
  • Subverted:
    • The hero jumps into a group of enemies, only to find out that they are a lot more powerful than they look.
    • The hero can defeat ten men at once. Give him twenty, though, and he's toast.
    • After cutting down groups of mooks, the hero runs into The Brute. They have a stare-off, prepare to fight... and the hero demolishes him as easily as the mooks before.
  • Double Subverted: ...But now that the hero has gotten into the swing of the battle, he can take care of them easily.
  • Parodied:
    • Groups of henchmen trip over themselves to retreat whenever they see a single hero advance towards them. Or one fighter can take on a group of enemies no matter how large it is.
    • Said henchmen trip over themselves on their way to battle!
  • Deconstructed: A single hero charges into the group, expecting to defeat his enemies easily. Turns out this was a pretty bad idea as the opponents gang up on him and finish him off.
    • Or he does beat them all... but because there were no witnesses, no one will believe that he has done such a thing.
  • Reconstructed:
    • ...But the challenge of taking on so many enemies at once forces him to fight with even more strength, since he's now fighting for his own survival.
    • The hero deliberately sets up a camera before the fight to prove their badassery and the bad guys let them finish before attacking
  • Zig Zagged: Various groups of enemies give the hero different levels of trouble with regard to defeating them.
  • Averted: The hero knows better than to recklessly attack his enemies and brings plenty of allies to help him out.
  • Enforced: "We need the hero to fight off hordes of enemies so it'll look really epic."
  • Lampshaded: "Who knew one guy could be so powerful?"
  • Invoked: The hero begins drawing plans for attacking the enemy fort, one of them being to charge wildly at the opponents and hope for the best.
  • Defied: The hero charges into battle, thinks about it for a second and turns back to get reinforcements.
  • Discussed: "Hell yeah, they brought out the ninja! Those guys don't stand a chance now!"
  • Conversed: "You ever wonder why one guy is capable of taking down entire armies of henchmen with such little effort?"
  • Played For Drama: More and more enemies start ganging up on the hero. The hero is fighting hard, but it's unsure if he'll be able to take on any more mooks.
  • Played For Laughs: The hero battles the henchmen with ease, possibly not even trying or doing other things while fighting (reading a book, making a phonecall, etc.).

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